1997 was a good year for David Mamet. As well as a play and a book (The Old Neighbourhood and The Old Religion) there was Wag The Dog, which he wrote, and The Spanish Prisoner, which he also directed then there was the fantastic survival thriller The Edge. Directed by Lee Tamahori, the film sees billionaire Charles Morse (Anthony Hopkins) survive a plane crash thus becoming stranded in the wilderness with a photographer (Alec Baldwin) and his assistant (Harold Perrineau) and hunted by a man-eating bear. What marks the film out as a solid piece of work is Mamet’s simple and unsentimental view of nature (including man) as a savage opponent and Tamahori’s uncomplicated direction.
Re-watching The Edge in the aftermath of More 4’s recent season on bears, one suspects Grizzly Man (2005) director Werner Herzog would approve. Both films extol the view of nature as being ‘red in tooth and claw’ and whilst Timothy Treadwell’s fate was seemingly sealed because of his child like ignorance and sentimentality, Charles Moore has a mountain of knowledge to fall back on and an understanding of survival as an act rather than a concept – “most people lost in the wilds, they, they die of shame.” Here is an understanding that if you strip away the comfort of civilisation there is nothing to life but the constant battle of survival.
As ever Mamet is telling it how it is, an unsentimental trait that seeps through his work (in Spartan (2004) a soldier is told that a Ranger survival manual passed down through his family might save his life one day – “use it to start a fire”), no matter what the setting, and strips films down to basic, effective mechanics… and he also writes fantastic dialogue.
The Edge is availiable on DVD.
